


Holy Ground

by kireteiru



Series: Not Endgame Fix-Its [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Animal Transformation, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 12:27:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19151032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kireteiru/pseuds/kireteiru
Summary: "You got inside my head, I want you out,'Cause I've been betrayed on holy ground."- "Holy Ground", Within Temptation (Resist).His mother had warned him to guard his heart, but he hadn't understood then.He did now.





	Holy Ground

**Author's Note:**

> I like to complain about Steve's ending to one of my friends, who is equally pissed, and she had these wise words for me: "you can't apply logic to a situation where logic does not exist." So here, have another situation where logic doesn't exist.

His mother had warned them. Him and his sisters. As much as she could, anyway; even she hadn’t known what she was warning them about, only handing down rumors, warnings, same as her father had given to her and her siblings.

_Bury your heart. Don’t get invested, don’t give it away to anyone; they’ll only betray it, and then the fire will come._

Bucky hadn’t understood then. He didn’t think his sisters had either, or any of their family a half-dozen generations back. But they had vowed to pass on the warnings to their children, and to make them swear to pass it down, too.

He hadn't understood then.

He did now.

* * *

It hadn’t hit right away. He hadn’t understood, not really; time travel changed all the rules, to say nothing of alternate realities and Infinity Stones and everything else he’d missed. Half the universe wiped out and then restored five years later? It was a lot to wrap his head around.

Then Steve left and came back an old man. Bucky hadn’t understood then, either; just one more thing on a heap of “things Bucky Barnes doesn’t understand.”

But he muddled on, kept trying.

Then he got invited to Steve’s house, and the instant he stepped through the door, he knew something was wrong. The icy veil of the Winter Soldier fell over him as if it had never gone; he took in the weapons he had on him, the sightlines, the escape routes, the potential threats. Some of the new SHIELD and their allies were here, celebrating something he could no longer remember, but that wasn’t the threat.

He drifted through the house like a ghost, silent, watching, and then he finally started to see, to understand.

Children’s height marks on one wall near the kitchen. If the house had been sold to Steve, they would have been painted over.

No recent signs of refurbishment, remodeling, moving furniture. Everything was in the same place it had been for years, well-worn and dusty in forgotten corners.

The bedrooms were all lived in, had personal touches from different people, things that there would have been no reason to bring over.

The kids. He didn’t meet them, but he heard them get introduced, saw them and their own children amongst the guests.

And then he understood. This, at least.

Steve hadn’t lived with Peggy in another timeline. If he had, he wouldn’t have all of this – he would have returned _old_ , but _on the platform_.

There was no other timeline.

There was only this one.

For an instant, the veil of the Winter Solder tightened around him, deepened to the stabbing, burning, bitter cold of cryosleep.

And then deep inside him, something _ignited_.

* * *

He didn’t know how he got to the Sanctum Sanctorum – he didn’t even know how he knew where it was, but once he stepped through the doors, tasted the magic in the air, he knew that was where he was.

He stayed in the entryway, shuddering. The fire – the _Fire_ – was growing inside him with every passing second; the cold of the Winter Soldier would not hold it back forever.

“-rnes. Sergeant Barnes.”

His eyes jerked up, and the bearded man – one of the wizards he vaguely recognized from the Battle of Earth – inhaled sharply, eyes going wide for a second. (And that was another thing – _wizards?!_ For _real?!_ )

“ _Focus_ , Sergeant!”

He snapped back into place; even in just that single instant, the Fire had started to slip through.

“We do not have the capability to house you here while you Burn,” said the wizard, “Come with me.”

“ _Wakanda_ ,” he managed, his voice more of a growl than proper human speech.

“They most likely will not have the facilities for you either,” said the wizard, “but I will contact them when it nears its end. _Come._ ”

Bucky staggered after the man, stumbling through a sparking orange-gold portal to another place steeped even deeper in magic. He continued following the wizard, only half-seeing where they were going.

An arena. The wizard led him to an arena of sorts, sunlight slanting out through skylights in a circle in the domed roof. A handful of other wizards were hurrying to their places on the first row of seats.

“Wait for us to get the barrier up, then you may… do whatever you need to,” said the wizard, and then he flew to his own place in the circle.

There was chanting in a language he didn’t understand. The barrier swirled into place, locked, sealed. Again, there was a vision, a hallucination: he tasted the rubber of his biteplate, heard the crackle of the Chair-

He fell to his knees in the sand, and the Fire broke free and _Burned_.

* * *

“Thank you for coming, Your Majesty. I apologize for the secrecy, but some things are best left unsaid if they can be overheard.”

“I understand completely, Doctor; pay it no mind. Although I have to say I _am_ curious. What’s this about?”

“Sergeant Barnes.”

 _“The White Wolf?”_ Shuri chimed in over her brother’s _kimoyo_ beads, _“No one’s heard from him in almost a week. Is he all right?”_

“That depends on your definition of ‘all right.’ Please, this way. It’s almost over, and then you'll be able to decide for yourself.” Strange led the way through the halls of Kamar-Taj. “Initially he said he wanted to go to Wakanda, but I didn’t know if your country had the capability to hold him safely while he Burned. I thought it safer to bring him here, then release him to you when it was over.”

 _“‘While he Burned,’”_ Shuri repeated.

“See for yourself.” Strange pushed open the doors to the arena.

A glittering golden barrier arced over the arena floor, but it could not conceal what lay within: a massive unnatural fire. It was black at its heart, fading to electric blue at the edges, and it burned _hot_ , so hot that the sand around it was molten and glowed red.

The two men and the Dora Milaje approached Wong, who was overseeing the sorcerers maintaining the barrier. “How are we doing?” the Sorcerer Supreme asked.

Wong sighed. “The barrier’s holding, but that’s about all that can be said for it. He’s… _intense_.” He inclined his head. “Your Majesty.”

T’Challa returned the gesture. “You mean to tell me that _this_ is the White Wolf?”

“Correct. But when he comes out, he won’t be a wolf.” To Strange, Wong said, “We’re going to need you when the last wave hits.”

Strange frowned. “The others?”

“Exhausted on the previous waves. There hasn’t been a Burn like this in at least a thousand years, and then the Order’s numbers were much greater.”

“When was the last one, period?”

“At least three hundred years. It was thought that the blood had thinned too much to allow for it.”

The Fire suddenly started to shrink, but its heat intensified.

“It’s time!” Wong shouted, and both he and Strange raced for places that opened up for them in the circle of wizards. They added their power to the barrier, and it glowed even brighter – right before the Fire _pulsed_.

The barrier blocked most of the force but still shattered under the strain, and the room shook like there was an earthquake. Everyone staggered. Some fell. The stones shifted and rained dust and sand down on them all.

The Fire began to shift, change shape, take on a definite form. Then it flickered out.

 _“Bast have mercy,_ ” one of the Dora Milaje murmured.

T’Challa agreed.

 _A dragon_.

A _massive_ black dragon, easily thirty meters from the end of his nose to the tip of his tail, with a wingspan twice that. He was muscled but still slender and sly, almost serpentine, and not just his arm but now his whole body was armored in living gold and vibranium, right down to his fangs and horns.

And his _eyes_. Exotic, electric blue – _Tesseract blue_ – set in a black like the void of space.

The dragon growled, and he pulled himself out of the pool of molten glass, great glowing drops falling off of him like rain. One of the sorcerers rushed in behind him and froze the glass, which let out cracks like gunshots.

“Sergeant Barnes.”

The dragon’s head swung around. Then his jaws parted, letting them glimpse razor-sharp vibranium fangs. _“I never learned your name.”_

“Doctor Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.”

 _“Doctor Strange,”_ he rumbled, almost tasting the name, _“You and yours have my sincerest thanks for helping me while I Burned, but I would like to go home to Wakanda, if I am still welcome.”_

“Of course you are.” T’Challa didn’t even hesitate. If nothing else, he would be safe inside the barrier, where no one would hunt him for his body’s wealth.

 _“Although it will be difficult to explain to_ umama _how we have lost our White Wolf and gained a Black Dragon,”_ Shuri piped up.

“Hush, you.”

 _“Not to mention the logistics of_ getting _you to Wakanda unseen.”_

“I believe we can help with that,” Wong volunteered.

* * *

It took about a week for Bucky to return himself to human form, which T’Challa and his guard enjoyed as a vacation of sorts, taking in the local color and socializing with the sorcerers, many of whom spent their time hovering around the dragon and basking in the waves of magic he threw off like heat.

But they were there when the Fire ignited again and flickered out, leaving Bucky human but _changed_. His eyes were the same as his dragon form, blue on black, his hair had darkened, and his ears had a just _barely_ noticeable point to them.

His prosthetic arm was still exactly that; the Burn had not regrown it, even though it had erased all his scars. But the plates themselves had changed, become scales edged with gold from shoulder to wrist, and the fingers were tipped with claws like the Panther Habit.

_“Oh my Bast. Straight to my lab when you get back, White Boi!”_

“As you wish, Princess.”

* * *

On the flight home, T’Challa broke his silence at last. “If I may ask, and you are able to speak of it… what prompted this change?”

Bucky was silent for a long time, so long that the king almost thought he wasn’t going to answer. But at last he said, “I have been betrayed.”

T’Challa tilted his head.

“Have you heard? What – _Rogers_ – has done?”

“Only that he lived out his life with his old flame. The woman from the war – Peggy Carter.”

Bucky laughed softly, bitterly. “Yes indeed. And that’s all he did.” At T’Challa’s frown, he continued, “There was no alternate timeline for him. No world where he ripped up HYDRA before it could take root inside SHIELD. No world where he stopped wars and saved lives – no world where the Battle of Manhattan was over in an eyeblink, where Insight never crashed and Sokovia never rose. Where Vienna was never bombed and the Gauntlet never snapped.

“There is no other timeline. Only this one.

“Steve Rogers lived out his life with Peggy Carter – _but that’s all he did_.”

Vibranium flashed, turned enamel teeth to metal fangs, and Bucky hissed out a sob.

_“We are all of us betrayed.”_

T’Challa’s face was a mask of horror and dawning rage, but the dragon didn’t see – another vision struck.

Steve was pressed and crisp in his Army uniform, Peggy resplendent in white, with the Commandos and some of her family seated in the pews. But he couldn’t hear their vows – only himself screaming.

And then a voice in Russian: _Break him_.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about making him a phoenix, but the visual of a dragon plated with gold and vibranium was too much to pass up.


End file.
